


Cake or Death?

by JungMichan



Series: Splintered Light: EXO Canon-AU Oneshots [1]
Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Allergies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hospitalization, Hurt/Comfort, Male Friendship, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25963423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JungMichan/pseuds/JungMichan
Summary: Jongin hates having to draw attention to his allergy, but his reluctance to seek help might be more dangerous than he realizes.
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Kim Junmyeon | Suho
Series: Splintered Light: EXO Canon-AU Oneshots [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2166735
Comments: 11
Kudos: 64





	Cake or Death?

It’s on Jongin’s third bite of Junmyeon’s birthday cake that he feels his lips start to tingle. He pauses mid-chew, the noise of the others laughing, teasing and chattering fading out as he focuses in on the sensation. The tingling grows rapidly stronger and spreads into his mouth, painting a metallic taste across his tongue, the inside of his cheeks and the back of his throat. Shit, Jongin thinks. He wants to spit the cake in his mouth out, but he can’t. That would be so rude, and draw everyone’s attention to him, and he’d have to try and explain why he’s just spat out the cake Kyungsoo baked. Worst of all, he’d surely hurt Kyungsoo’s feelings, and that is something Jongin would rather die than do.

He swallows the rest of his mouthful and moves his tongue around the inside of his mouth, trying to clear it of crumbs. He can feel his gums are already swelling, growing itchy and rising away from his teeth, and his throat is tightening. He looks in dismay at the cake on his plate. He’d asked Kyungsoo what kind of cake it was, and Kyungsoo had just said “chocolate”. Jongin had given the cake his usual careful inspection and hadn’t seen any sign of tree nuts sprinkled on top of the icing or hidden inside the spongy interior. A chocolate cake is a chocolate cake, right? It all seemed perfectly safe.

It still seems safe on second inspection. There are no nuts hiding inside this cake as far as he can tell. He can’t figure out what’s gone wrong. Could it have gotten contaminated somehow when Kyungsoo was making it back at the dorm? It’s almost impossible. The nuts he’s allergic to are the expensive kinds; hazelnuts, walnuts, brazil nuts, chestnuts. None of the guys ever buy them, and even if they did, how would they have made their way into Junmyeon’s birthday cake?

His throat is starting to itch and his stomach lining feels like it’s burning. Jongin has felt these sensations often enough throughout his life to know what they herald, and his heart starts to beat faster. If he doesn’t do something, he knows the fiery feeling in his stomach will turn to nausea and then vomiting, and the itchy throat will grow ugly red weals and swell until he can barely breathe. This cannot happen. It’s not the impending medical emergency that has Jongin near panic. It’s because he simply cannot bear to make a fuss.

Jongin has a powerful aversion to drawing what he sees as negative attention to himself. It fills him with a deep sense of shame that he knows is illogical, yet is none the less powerful for that. The idea of having to tell his group members that he’s having an allergic reaction makes him feel like a stupid kid who can’t take care of himself. He can’t bear the idea of the dramatic reactions he’ll get if he explains to them that this allergy is not just going to give him a rash or make him puke, it’s going to swell up his airways and lower his blood pressure and maybe even stop his heart. He can’t bear to have Kyungsoo find out that the cake he made is killing Jongin. He can’t bear to ruin Junmyeon’s birthday party with his stupid condition and wreck the first opportunity his group members and best friends have had to relax and hang out together in months. He can’t bear to imagine the news articles that will go out about how stupid EXO’s Kai is, that he gets himself put in hospital because he wanted to eat birthday cake.

All these thoughts are crashing through his head, but he manages to make his face stay calm. He pulls his wallet from his pocket and hides his hands under the table while he opens it and finds the small pack of pills he keeps inside - they are antihistamines, allergy relievers intended for sufferers of hay-fever. In his backpack under his chair is a glasses case which does not contain glasses, but instead hides an automatic injector called an Epipen that will deliver him a pre-loaded dose of the drug epinephrine - but Jongin is not going to use that. The Epipen could save his life if his body goes into shock, but if that happens, he needs to go to hospital or risk death. That’s not happening to him. Not here, not now. Jongin refuses to believe he may be going into anaphylactic shock, and so he will not use his Epipen, because that would force him to believe it.

He slips two of the tiny antihistamine pills into his hand, and when everyone is laughing at a joke Baekhyun has just cracked, he pops them into his mouth and dry-swallows. The pills are the strongest you can get and the dose is one pill per 6 hours, but he doesn’t care. Two pills isn’t enough for a critical overdose, and his body needs the drug. The allergy symptoms are progressing too fast. He needs to stop them right now.

“Don’t you like the cake, Jongin?” Sitting next to him, Junmyeon has noticed his barely touched slice, where everyone else has already demolished theirs. Across the table Jongin sees Kyungsoo’s eyes go to his plate too. He sees the faint disappointment cross his hyung’s face, and a pang of guilt and dismay strikes him.

“No, I love it, it’s really delicious,” he says quickly. “I’m just making it last.” He hesitates, trying to find a way to ask his question that won’t sound weird. “Does it taste a bit different to usual?” He asks Kyungsoo. “It’s so good, but I think it tastes a little different to normal chocolate cake?”

Kyungsoo smiles at him, one of the rare bow-shaped smiles that lightens his serious face and always makes Jongin’s heart feel warm - at least, when it’s not trying to flutter its panicky way out of his ribcage the way it’s doing now. “I used a blend of flours,” he says. “I mixed hazelnut flour in with the regular. I’m glad somebody noticed! This lot just inhale anything in front of them without even tasting it.”

Hazelnut flour. Jongin’s heart plummets into his shoes even as he finds a smile to send back at his friend. Trust Kyungsoo to get all fancy and mix hazelnut flour into an innocent-looking chocolate cake. It’s not like he can blame the poor guy. It’s Jongin’s fault for not telling anyone about his allergy. He’d thought he could manage it by being careful, but he hadn’t counted on being trapped like this.

The one time in the past three years he’s been with EXO he felt the first sign of an allergic reaction, the antihistamines had been enough to prevent the symptoms from progressing. But that had been from only touching a piece of seed-bread with his fingers - he hadn’t even put it in his mouth because he’d seen the walnuts baked into the crust in time. This time he’s swallowed three full mouthfuls of hazelnut flour. Are antihistamines - even a double dose - going to be enough to save him?

They have to be. They just have to be. Jongin’s shame is so crippling that he feels like he would truly rather die than admit to needing help. The situation is only made worse because he looks fine at the moment. Nobody can tell what’s going on inside him. They can’t see the fiery burning in his stomach, the swollen gums behind his teeth, the itchy red welts rising up underneath his high-necked sweater. They can’t force him to tell them what’s wrong with him, because they can’t see anything wrong.

His eyes are itching like crazy and feel like they’re full of sand when he blinks, but he can tell they’re only swelling a little so far - nobody will notice that, not unless they look at him carefully. He desperately wants to rub them, but he knows that once he does that it will really be the end. Rubbing his eyes will make them swell into huge, puffy balls that he can barely see out of, impossible to miss by anyone who even glances at him. He has to resist. The antihistamines will work soon. They have to.

He tries to join in with the laughter of the others, but it’s hard to focus when his body is so itchy, his mouth and stomach are so extremely uncomfortable, and panic is making his heart pound and his hands shake. At least, he hopes it’s just panic that’s doing that and not a more serious symptom. He takes a careful breath and tries to assess his airway. His throat feels tight and swallowing is painful, but he can still breathe. The symptoms aren’t getting worse. The antihistamines must be working.

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Sehun, on his left, is eyeing his leftover cake. Jongin feels a surge of relief. Maybe he can swing this so that he can get out of eating the rest of the cake without hurting Kyungsoo’s feelings. He glances at Kyungsoo and when he sees the singer is engrossed in an intense-looking conversation with Yixing, he slides his plate along the table and swaps it with Sehun’s empty one. He gives his friend a conspiratorial smile, and Sehun grins back at him and begins demolishing the rest of Jongin’s cake.

“Feeding the maknae, huh?” The quiet voice on Jongin’s other side is Junmyeon. The leader smiles at him. “You don’t have to give him everything he wants, you know. He’s only a couple of months younger than you.”

“I know, but he looked hungry,” Jongin shrugs and grins back, glad it’s Junmyeon that’s noticed and not one of his louder hyungs like Chanyeol or Baekhyun. Those guys seem to just blab out the first things that fly into their heads at top volume.

Ten minutes later, Jongin can still breathe, and nobody has gasped in horror when they look at him, so he assumes the reaction hasn’t caused his face to swell up into the classic anaphylactic balloon. This is typical of Jongin’s reactions, especially now that he’s an adult - he tends to get more internal symptoms than external ones. Speaking of internal symptoms, though, the acidic burning in his stomach is starting to convert to nausea. His body does not want that hazelnut flour inside it, and Jongin knows with a growing sense of inevitability that he’s going to throw up before long. It’s not uncontrollable yet, but it’s going to happen.

He stands up, and when Junmyeon glances at him he mumbles “bathroom”. Nobody pays much attention as he makes his way out of the private room in the restaurant and down a quiet corridor into the men’s room. He leans close to the long mirror above the sinks to inspect his reflection and is relieved to find that his face looks almost normal. His eyes are redder and puffier than usual, but he could easily put that down to tiredness. He bares his teeth and inspects his swollen gums, then pulls the neck of his woolen sweater down. What he finds there is not so reassuring. There are multiple long, raised red streaks all the way down his throat and up behind his ears, where they’re hidden under his hair. The welts look livid and painful. Jongin pulls the neck of his sweater back up, goes into the nearest toilet stall and locks the door. He leans against the cold wall of the stall and closes his eyes. Why did this have to happen - and on Junmyeon’s birthday, of all things? He’s done so well until now.

His stomach lining feels like it’s on fire, and sweat breaks out across his temples as his nausea increases. He bends over the toilet and retches experimentally, but nothing happens. Sighing a little, he rolls up his sleeve and sticks three fingers into his mouth. It’s going to happen anyway, he might as well get it over with. He pushes his fingers against the back of his throat and hits the gag reflex. Combined with his already unsettled stomach, it’s all the encouragement his body needs to begin rejecting hazelnut-flour birthday cake with a vengeance, along with the rest of the birthday meal he’d eaten before it.

Such a waste, he thinks vaguely amidst the horribleness of repeated vomiting. Still, it’s definitely better out than in. His body thinks hazelnut flour is poison. Getting it out of him must be a good thing. Perhaps he should have induced vomiting earlier. But then he’d have thrown up the antihistamines too. Though he’s probably thrown them up now anyway.

He hangs onto the toilet bowl, his body shaking. He’s a little dizzy, but he thinks it’s just from throwing up so much. His eyes and nose are streaming, and he grabs some toilet paper and wipes his face. He sits down on the floor to regain his composure and the toilet automatically flushes. It’s probably just his throat feeling sore from vomiting, but he thinks it’s a little harder to breathe.

He tries to decide whether it’s safe to take another antihistamine. Some of the drug will have gotten into his system before he threw up, but it’s impossible to say how much, and he doesn’t want to accidentally overdose. He might as well be in hospital for anaphylactic shock as for an overdose. In fact, an allergic reaction would certainly be the less scandalous of the two.

He forces himself to get up, and a wave of dizziness washes over him. He grabs the door to steady himself and then pushes his way out and over to the sinks. He washes his face and hands and makes sure no splashes of vomit have gotten onto his jersey or in his hair. He rests his hands on the sink counter and hangs his head, face dripping water, and concentrates on breathing.

“Jongin?” He immediately recognizes the voice as Junmyeon’s. He opens his eyes and turns his head. Junmyeon is coming towards him, looking faintly concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” Jongin says quickly. He straightens up and is relieved when the dizziness doesn’t return. His voice sounds hoarse, though, and Junmyeon frowns.

“You don’t look so good. Did you throw up?”

Jongin hesitates, wondering whether he’s good enough a liar to deny this, and what other excuse he can give to explain his pale face, bloodshot eyes and hoarse voice, but apparently the hesitation is answer enough for Junmyeon. The concern grows deeper and he steps closer to put a hand on Jongin’s back, looking into his face.

“Poor kid,” he murmurs. “Does your stomach hurt?”

“No, not really,” Jongin hangs his head, unable to meet Junmyeon’s worried eyes. The dreaded shame is creeping through him. He hates this, he hates it when people worry about him. It makes him feel so useless. He doesn’t know why, but somehow he just doesn’t feel worthy of it. “I think something I ate didn’t agree with me. I’ll be okay now it’s out.” Please let that be true, he thinks desperately. Please let everything be okay now.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m okay now,” Jongin repeats. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Come back and drink some water,” Junmyeon says. He takes Jongin’s hand and walks him out of the bathroom and back towards the room where the playful noise of the others is audible even through the closed door. Before Junmyeon opens it Jongin tugs his arm a little.

“Hyung,” he says quietly. “Don’t tell the others. It’s embarrassing.”

Junmyeon grins at him. “Okay, I won’t - if you promise to tell me if you feel any worse. You can just whisper in my ear if you don’t want the other kids to know.”

Junmyeon is such a good friend. Jongin is so relieved that Junmyeon understands that tears almost come to his eyes. The emotional reaction is probably just because he feels so crap right now, but he can’t help it.

“Okay,” he agrees, though he has no intention of following through with this promise. He blinks hard as they enter the room again and drops thankfully into his seat. Everything feels a little weird right now. He feels strange, almost detached. His eyes have stopped itching and so has his neck and the other places on his body that doubtless have welts on them, but he doesn’t exactly feel normal, either.

Is this bad? He wonders. But he can still breathe, though he can feel the wheeze in his chest. He’d surely be able to hear it if it wasn’t so noisy in here. Breathing is the main thing, right? He’s okay if he can still breathe. He’s fine. He’s going to be fine.

A couple of minutes later the manager tells them to start getting ready to go. It’s getting late and they have early dance practice and schedules tomorrow, as usual. Jongin stands up slowly, hands braced on the table as dizziness hits him again. He tries to breathe in deeply, but the wheeze is worse and he can’t get quite enough air in. He balances himself and follows the others out of the room. He’s at the back of the group as they leave the nearly empty restaurant and step out into the night. The cold air hits Jongin like a hammer blow and slightly clears his head, but he immediately starts to shiver.

It’s a fifteen-minute walk back to their dorm. They can’t walk the streets in daylight without getting caught by fans, but late at night and unscheduled with no cameras present, in plain clothes with their brightly-colored hair under beanies and their faces behind scarves or masks, it’s safe enough to walk the quiet backstreets without getting dangerously mobbed. The few people that do recognize them are locals and either polite enough or used to them enough to let them go on their way unchallenged. Jongin walks at the back of the group in a daze, shivering uncontrollably despite his thick coat. He doesn’t remember ever feeling this cold. Surely he’s turning into a block of ice. He doesn’t seem to be able to think straight anymore, and everything is starting to grow distant and surreal. The street twists strangely ahead of him, and he gasps aloud, standing still in the cold street.

Sehun looks back at him at the sound. “Jongin? Are you okay?”

“Sehun,” Jongin wheezes. He’s suddenly so dizzy that he thinks he’s going to fall over. Sehun takes a couple of steps back towards him and Jongin grabs his arm. His knees go weak and he clings to Sehun’s coat tightly.

“What’s the matter?” Sehun’s voice sounds alarmed. Jongin drops his head and presses it against Sehun’s upper arm, gasping for breath. On some distant level he can hear how scary his breathing is sounding, but he’s lost the ability to care. Right now he just has to stand here and press his head against Sehun’s coat and try to breathe, or he’s going to pass out right here in the street. There’s still enough of Jongin’s pride left in his failing body to scream at him that this is not an option. He cannot pass out. He can’t pass out because if he passes out that means he’ll have to tell someone why he passed out, and then he won’t be able to hide anymore.

“Jongin!” Junmyeon is suddenly beside him, Sehun is holding him up, and the others are starting to crowd around, confused and worried faces surrounding him on all sides. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick again?”

Jongin gasps, his head still pressed into Sehun’s arm.

“Gonna - pass - out,” he wheezes, and as he says the last word, the last of the strength in his legs goes. Sehun and Junmyeon catch him and control his fall to the street, holding him in a kneeling position. His body flops back limply against Sehun’s chest and Junmyeon is gripping his shoulders. His worried face blurs and his words sound distorted. Far above them, the others are crowding close, voices gabbling, asking each other alarmed questions. Their manager is kneeling in the street beside them. Somewhere in Jongin’s mind, his horror of making a fuss is screaming at him, but it can’t get through the reeling dizziness and the darkness creeping in to tunnel his vision.

“He can’t breathe,” he hears that Sehun’s voice is trembling with fear. “Listen to him, he can’t breathe. Is he having an asthma attack or something?”

“He doesn’t have asthma,” the older voice is the manager. His face replaces Junmyeon’s. Jongin tries to focus on it, but there’s barely anything but darkness now.

“Jongin?” He hears his name, but can’t respond. “Jongin! Can you hear me? I need you to talk to me…”

He tries, but he can’t. His eyes close and his body slumps lifelessly against Sehun’s chest. Through the whirling darkness he hears the manager tell someone to call an ambulance.

No, Jongin tries to cry. Don’t call an ambulance. Please. I’d rather die. Just let me die. But he can’t find his mouth to let the words out, and all he can feel now is the icy, icy cold.

Drifting in a dark, cold state of near-unconsciousness, Jongin comes to a knowledge that his death is not far away. And somehow, it doesn’t scare him. Jongin has never really wanted to die, but now that it’s happening, it’s not as scary as he imagined. It’s just...calm. So very, very calm. His body is like a distant memory, and the things happening to it don’t feel real at all. His ears direct the sounds of wailing sirens into his brain, along with familiar voices calling his name. He hears Junmyeon. He hears the manager. They want him to come back to them, but the deep, cold calm is pulling Jongin deeper, and he has no ability to obey the receding voices that are still calling his name.

\--

The sight of Jongin gasping in obvious distress as he pressed his face into Sehun’s arm, then collapsing down to the cold street as if he had no strength left in his body, was one of the most terrifying things Junmyeon has ever seen in his life, but it keeps getting trumped with every passing second. Jongin is lying helpless in Sehun’s arms, his eyes barely open, and every breath he takes comes with a terrifyingly restricted wheeze. His lips are a dark blue, and his face is going blue too.

The ambulance only takes minutes to arrive, but it seems like forever to Junmyeon, a forever during which Jongin’s hands are like lumps of ice in his and his face seems to get bluer with every passing second. He looks like he’s dying. He sounds like he’s dying. Junmyeon has no idea what’s happening to his younger friend and it’s utterly terrifying. He takes off his thick coat and puts it over Jongin’s freezing body, not even noticing how cold the night air is without it. Tears are pouring down Sehun’s face as he repeatedly calls his friend’s name, but Junmyeon can only focus on Jongin.

The paramedics work swiftly, loading Jongin onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance. Junmyeon scrambles in after them, grabbing Jongin’s hand desperately, and after telling Minseok to take the rest of the shocked and terrified group back to the dorm, the manager gets in after him. The doors slam and the two paramedics begin working on Jongin as the ambulance roars away, sirens wailing. An oxygen mask goes over Jongin’s blue face and one of the paramedics takes his blood pressure. When she reads the number out, her voice goes sharp and both their movements get busier. Something is injected into Jongin’s thigh, and one of the paramedics shoves his sleeve up and starts looking for a vein.

“Get a wide bore IV in,” the first paramedic says. The one holding Jongin’s arm mutters a curse.

“His veins have collapsed. I can’t get the line in.”

“Keep trying,” the first orders.

“What’s happening?” Junmyeon asks desperately. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s in shock,” the paramedic tells him. “His airway is restricted and his blood pressure is dangerously low. What happened leading up to his collapse?”

“We were walking home from a restaurant and he just grabbed hold of Sehun and started gasping,” Junmyeon’s words are almost tripping over each other in his anxiety. “He said he was going to pass out, and then he just collapsed. He threw up after the meal but he said he just ate something that disagreed with him and he seemed okay after throwing up. That couldn’t cause this, could it?”

“Anaphylactic shock,” the first paramedic tells the second, who nods.

“Ana - what?” Junmyeon has never heard the word.

“It’s a severe allergic reaction - so severe it can be fatal. Jongin probably had an allergic reaction to something he ate. Do you know of any allergies?”

“No,” Junmyeon looks at the manager. “He doesn’t have allergies, does he?”

“I don’t know of any,” the manager shakes his head.

“Did he eat something he’s not tried before?”

Junmyeon tries to think of anything unusual they’d eaten, but it was just a normal meal. He looks at Jongin anxiously. He looks so small and fragile under the oxygen mask. So terrifyingly close to being snatched away from him forever. He’s never heard of an allergy being so bad you can die from it. He can’t understand how one moment Jongin could have been walking home with them, and the next just passing out like that.

“How’s his pressure?” The female paramedic asks the male.

“Not recovering. Give another 0.5 epinephrine,” and a second shot is injected through Jongin’s jeans and into his thigh.

“Can you try and get the IV in? I can’t find a vein, his pressure’s too low. Everything’s going to tissue.”

They start looking for a vein in the back of Jongin’s hand instead of the crook of his elbow which already sports multiple bruise-colored spots from the failed attempts. Junmyeon can’t hold Jongin’s hand while they’re working on it, so he puts his hand on his friend’s shoulder instead, then tries to smooth some of his hair away from where it’s gotten caught under the elastic strap of the mask.

“You’ll be okay,” he whispers, trying not to let his voice tremble, trying to believe his own words. “They’re going to look after you. You’re going to be okay.”

The ambulance pulls up at the hospital and Jongin is rushed inside and into a curtained bay, where he’s immediately surrounded by a team of doctors and nurses. Junmyeon barely feels the manager’s arm around his shoulders as he presses both hands against his mouth and watches them attach monitors and lines to his friend, calling numbers and words to each other Junmyeon doesn’t understand. His eyes desperately follow every movement, trying to make sense of what he’s seeing. They have to save him. Jongin has to be okay. He doesn’t even realize he’s crying until the manager takes his wrist and presses a tissue into his hand.

“Hyung,” Junmyeon whispers without looking away from Jongin. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Of course,” the manager tells him, squeezing his shoulders. “Jongin’s a tough kid, and there are drugs to treat anaphylactic shock. They’ll save him.”

Junmyeon clings to the words. He has to believe them, because the alternative is too awful to bear.

Finally the flurry of activity around Jongin seems to die down, and some of the staff move away. A doctor turns to them.

“Jongin has stabilized,” he tells them. “We have treated the anaphylactic shock and we’re now giving him intravenous fluids and steroids to treat the allergic reaction.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Junmyeon’s voice is shaking.

The doctor gives him a reassuring smile. “Yes, he’s going to be fine. We’ll need to keep him here for six hours of observation to make sure the allergic reaction does not recur, but after that you’ll be able to take him home.”

\--

“Jongin? Jongin, wake up...”

Someone is calling his name, and Jongin knows that voice. It’s Junmyeon, and he needs to open his eyes and answer him, because there’s a quivering note in the leader’s voice Jongin has never heard before. It sounds scared. Almost desperate.

He opens his eyes. He sees a white ceiling, a curtained-off cubicle around the bed he lies in, and through a small gap in the curtains the unmistakable bustle of an emergency room. He knows immediately that he’s in hospital, and a strange, sinking feeling settles in his chest. He feels so much better than he did the last time he was awake, but along with feeling better, his fear quickly rises. Oh God, he thinks, and shame rises up to try and choke him. What have I done?

“Jongin? Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” he says, and turns his head to look at Junmyeon. The leader’s face is pale and tear-stained, and he’s holding Jongin’s hand in both of his. When he sees Jongin looking at him, he breaks into a smile that’s brimming over with relief and joy - but it just makes Jongin feel like the lowest worm on the planet. This is all his fault. It’s his fault Junmyeon looks like he’s been to hell and back in the past couple of hours. It’s his fault he’s ruined his birthday.

“Hyung,” he says. His eyes fill with tears and he bites his lip hard. “I fucked up.”

Junmyeon shakes his head and leans forward to dab at the tears that leak out to trickle down the sides of Jongin’s face and into his ears.

“No,” he says gently, “it wasn’t your fault. You had an allergic reaction. You couldn’t help it.”

“But I could help it,” Jongin whispers. He’s so ashamed that he wishes he had died - except that he knows he doesn’t really wish that. Looking at Junmyeon’s tear-stained smiling face shows him exactly why he doesn’t wish that. Junmyeon was crying so much even though he’s okay now, and if he hadn’t been okay, well....

Jongin knows all that, but he’s still too horrified at what’s happened to be able to bear it. He pulls his hand out of Junmyeon’s and rolls onto his side to hide his face, ignoring the sickening stab of pain in his hand as an IV needle tugs. He starts to cry silently, sobs shaking his body. The worst has happened. He’s caused a huge scene, he’s ruined everything, and now he just doesn’t know what to do.

“Jongin,” Junmyeon’s hand is gently rubbing his back. “It’s okay, it’s all okay now. I’m here. Don’t cry. What’s wrong? You can tell me.”

“I can’t,” Jongin sobs.

“Why not?”

“You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t hate you,” Junmyeon says. “I never could, no matter what you did. I’m just so, so grateful you’re okay.”

Jongin tries to choke back his sobs. Slowly he rolls back over to look at Junmyeon. The leader takes his hand again and strokes it. He smiles gently at him, so full of care and love, and Jongin finally realizes he can trust him.

“I knew I was having an allergic reaction,” he whispers. “It was the hazelnut flour in the birthday cake. I thought it was just normal chocolate cake, but...but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t use my Epipen or tell anyone that I needed to go to hospital. I didn’t want to ruin your birthday, hyung,” another tear runs down his face, “but now I’ve ruined it worse than I ever dreamed. I’m so sorry...” he bites his lip hard and pulls his hand out of Junmyeon’s to cover his face.

Junmyeon leans forward and wraps his arms tightly around him. “Oh, Jongin,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. Maybe you didn’t make the smartest decision, but nobody thinks you wanted to end up in hospital! Whatever happened, it was an accident. And believe me,” a smile comes into his voice. “You being okay is the best birthday present I could ever wish for.”

“I’m such an idiot,” Jongin sniffs. “How come you don’t hate me?”

Junmyeon laughs. “Kiddo, if I hated all the idiots in this group, who on earth would there be left to love?”

At this, Jongin finds he’s laughing too. It’s a slightly broken laugh, and still a little too full of tears, but it’s there, and it’s enough to turn him away from the path of self-torment and back towards the light.

There’s still a lot for Jongin to work on. He has to accept that having a medical condition doesn’t make him weak or pathetic, and that it’s okay to need help sometimes. He has to learn not to blame himself when he gets sick. He has to understand that making a mistake doesn’t mean he’s worthless, and he has to conquer this terrible shame that makes him prefer to hide an illness that could kill him rather than ask for help.

But perhaps Jongin can trust his friends enough to let them in now, and that will be the first step taken.


End file.
